Colombia's president suggests Vatican could host new peace talks with rebel group

BOGOTA, Colombia — Colombia's President Gustavo Petro said on Monday that he is contemplating a new round of peace talks with the nation's largest remaining rebel group, and suggested that the talks could take place in the Vatican.

Petro's statement came after he attended an audience with Pope Leo XIV in the Vatican, which has not commented on the suggestion that it could host peace talks between Colombia's government and the National Liberation Army, or ELN, a group with around 5,000 fighters that was founded in the late 1960s.

''I spoke with the Pope about what can be done for the Vatican to hold the new peace talks,'' Petro said in a video posted on X.

He added that the ELN wants to keep talks in Cuba and Venezuela, but suggested that the Vatican could be a more suitable venue for negotiations.

''I think this is the place, where we can recall the theory of effective love,'' Petro said, referring to one of the founding principles of the rebel group.

The ELN has not commented on Petro's proposal.

Colombia's government suspended peace talks with the ELN in January after the group staged a series of deadly attacks on villages in the northeast Catatumbo region, that forced more than 50,000 people to flee their homes.

Petro, who was a member of another rebel group during his youth, has accused the ELN's leadership of becoming ''greedy'' criminals and of betraying their revolutionary ideals.

''They have replaced the banners of change and transformation, for the banners of Mexican drug cartels,'' Petro said on Monday.

The ELN was founded by activists and union leaders inspired by the Cuban revolution and by a Catholic movement known as liberation theology, that calls on the faithful to dismantle social and economic structures that cause inequality and poverty.

The group has also had members of the clergy among its ranks, including Camilo Torres, a prominent priest who joined the ELN shortly after it was founded and was killed in a battle with the Colombian army.

During his presidential campaign, Petro promised to make peace with the ELN ''within three months'' of taking office. Three years on, his government is struggling to pacify rural areas, where the ELN and several other groups are fighting over territory that was abandoned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the large guerrilla group that made peace with the government in 2016.

Colombia's Catholic Bishops Conference has called on the government and the ELN to resume negotiations so that violence can decrease in rural areas, where crimes like the forced recruitment of children, and the murders of human rights leaders are on the rise.